


Live Wires

by josephina_x



Series: Night and Flame: The Song Electric [3]
Category: Smallville, Smallville Season 11 (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Christmas, Fix-It, Gen, Hospitals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:41:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...Why? Well, because <i>somebody</i> has to clean up after Clark's Kryptonian ass, and we all know what the League's idea of that entails. At least Lex knows how to clean up after his <i>own</i> messes properly these days. (...Usually.) Unfortunately for him, Clark may actually count as one of those.</p><p>(Sequel to "Short Circuit" -- spans that story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Live Wires

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Live Wires  
> Author: [josephina_x](http://josephina-x.livejournal.com)  
> Fandom: Smallville, Smallville Season 11  
> Pairing: Clark, Lex  
> Rating: R (for swearing)  
> Spoilers: through Smallville (before the seven-year-jump), and through Season 11's "Guardian" arc (though a mild spoiler or two through the end of the "Detective" arc)  
> Word count: 5600+  
> Summary: ...Why? Well, because _somebody_ has to clean up after Clark's Kryptonian ass, and we all know what the League's idea of that entails. At least Lex knows how to clean up after his _own_ messes properly these days. (...Usually.) Unfortunately for him, Clark may actually count as one of those.  
>  Warnings: Un-beta'd. Entirely Lex-POV.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not-for-profit.  
> Comments: Yes, please! :)  
> Author's Note: A continuation of the original Clexmas Gift Exchange 2012 fic ["And Sparks Flew"](http://clexmas.livejournal.com/67665.html) for [jlvsclrk](http://jlvsclrk.livejournal.com), sequel to ["Short Circuit"](http://clexmas.livejournal.com/69067.html) as it spans the latter story.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Damage control.

Two little words. A _shit ton_ of problems.

Well, actually, it was really more like six words: damage control, damage control, (and, lest we not forget) _damage control_.

Lex was cursing himself, over and over again.

They'd taken blood samples from Kent. _Of course_ they had.

At first -- after a tactical retreat from Clark's hospital room in the face of an irate Green Arrow -- he'd just zoomed back upstairs to the on-premises bloodwork lab on the second floor of the hospital and grabbed the 'John Doe' sample associated with Clark's bed and surgery records. It hadn't even been that difficult -- it hadn't taken any real effort at all to speed up or slow down properly. It almost felt like second nature. Almost. He had to push it a bit, though. It was as though the power lived at the edges of his 'natural' (hah) ability.

Then he'd found himself standing in the northeast stairwell, staring at the damn thing, and realizing that holding the sample in his hot little hands was not going to do him the _least_ little bit of good, because the surgeons had cut into a living alien being and quite literally performed a partial live-autopsy on the thing, and _he'd told the damn starry-eyed hospital nurse Clark's first and last name_.

And he'd given Kent's last name _again_ to the burly male nurses when Clark had kicked up a fuss, too, and fuck, what the hell was wrong with him? Was he really that stupid?

...No, he just hadn't remembered that Clark was an alien, but, even so, he should have known better than to have just name-dropped like that, let alone allowed anyone but his own people operate on someone with meta-human powers, nor take biological samples from them.

Lex startled as he heard Oliver and Clark yelling at each other, and spun in place, looking all around. Then, for a moment, he damn near lost consciousness and his knees hit the floor as the sounds of the hospital rose up in a whirlwind, making it hard to think--

 _This happened in the shower stall,_ Lex thought weakly, as he forcefully mentally distanced himself from the cacophony of sound, and, correspondingly, the sound around him seemed to dim in intensity.

He was sweating slightly and shaking by the time he had _that_ under control again, and he slowly lowered his hands from his ears and cringed when he realized that he'd clutched the vial of blood so hard that he'd caused a hairline fracture in the outer casing.

The sound of Oliver's and Clark's voices faded in and out again, and Lex realized that Oliver was probably going to check Clark out of the hospital, soon. He needed to act fast.

Fuck. What could he do? What should he do?

...

Lex mentally slapped himself.

 _Idiot. Just do what you always do,_ he thought with the usual distaste. _Try to think like a reporter._ Shudder-ew-shudder. _Then kill all the live leads dead._

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex breathed out a sigh as he sat on the roof of the hospital, breathing in the cool air. He'd done it.

He'd made 'Clark Kent' _normal_.

...Sort of.

At this stage, there had been no easy way to protest that the 'Clark Kent' in the hospital wasn't _exactly_ who he was -- Clark Kent. So Lex hadn't even bothered to try.

Instead, he'd swapped out Clark's blood sample for a 'normal' one -- figuring out how to use the label-printer had honestly been the hardest part of that -- and hacked then changed the entries in the hospital database (for the labeler and the computerized records of the auto-bloodwork panel) accordingly. He'd stolen and shredded the old printouts of Kent's charts and then tossed them into the on-premises incinerator for good measure, along with the original blood sample vial, and replaced the blood-test records -- and those few follow-up charts referencing the vial number -- with ones he'd recreated new.

He couldn't do anything about the surgical staff's memories, or those of the nurses -- not without trying to break out what little he had left of the Summerholt tech that had survived Tess' rampaging through the labs and databanks, anyhow -- but the records in their own files hadn't indicated anything very much of the ordinary, as far as Lex could find. Past the original, delayed bloodwork itself, there was nothing to find, other than a random comment on the odd nature of the multitudinous green crystalline shards that they'd meticulously dug out of Clark's back, some perilously close to his spine and his lungs. Lex worried, but more over whether they'd managed to remove every last piece of green Kryptonite or not, than what they might say to anyone else later about Kent's odd biology -- if they'd been inclined to share the information, they'd have written it up in the formal surgical records, rather than kept it close to their chests.

Lex had opted not to edit those bits out, for the very practical reason that if someone were to notice the disparity in the records and check with the surgery team, then they could easily jump to the logical conclusion of that green crystal being something important to pursue a line of inquiry on.

There had been another note in Clark's charts on how the material might have caused the 'John Doe's non-reaction to the anesthestic, or interfered somehow with the body's natural responsiveness, as the surrounding tissue had seemed almost necrotic at the time of surgery, or so said the records. The last thing Lex needed was someone interested in the possible military application of green Kryptonite, to metahumans _or_ humans, as a biological agent of _any_ sort. He'd grimaced to himself, but left that comment intact as well, as another later note had indicated that the necrotic-seeming tissue had improved significantly by the time they closed, and 'probably' was due to the blood loss in that area of tissue. He hoped that anyone who might audit those files later would consider it a normal variation in human response to the shock of getting shot up and nearly bleeding out.

So, with those record-changes accomplished, that only left on his to-do list the removal of the shards to his custody, and a pick-up of the gun and shell casings used in the shooting back at the scene of the violence.

...Christ, and a thorough cleanup of the blood smear all along those marble hallways. _Fuck._

The latter was easily taken care of with a few very careful and explicitly-worded orders to some of his staff over his cellphone. Lex was not happy as he snapped his phone shut and slid it back into a pocket, and no, Metropolis' Finest were not going to be happy _either_ when their CSI samples were snagged by Lex's security staff. However, it _had_ been a private-invite-only gathering in a Lu-- a _LexCorp_ -owned subsidiary bulding, and Lex would be _damned_ if he'd let Clark get caught-out _that_ way on his own turf, goddamnit.

If Clark was going to be outed, it would be on Lex's own timetable and terms, _not_ because some corrupt old boys-in-blue were handed the information on a silver platter and decided to jump the gun prematurely.

Lex peeked over the side of the roof, and watched Oliver and Clark leave the premises, the latter in a wheelchair, the former pushing him along. Lex grimaced, shaking his head and wondering at the League's stupidity -- he doubted that they'd grabbed the bullet fragments themselves, or Clark would have been tossing little glances around and looking a little more cautious. At it was, Clark was wholly focused on arguing with Oliver, instead, and Lex wasn't sure if the reason he could still hear them all out in the open was due to his 'super-hearing' or not. ...Though, being a little more fair in his assessment, Lex supposed that if Clark hadn't brought it up in their little yelling match, then Oliver certainly might not have had any reason to suspect that the source of the Kryptonite that had debilitated his 'Superman' had been the bullet itself.

Lex shook his head to himself again, then stood up and sped back downstairs to take care of that final little matter.

Looking back on it, the shards were actually the hardest to handle of the lot.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex jogged right up to the surgical cabinet holding the meteor rock shards at 'super-speed'.

...and then felt overwhelmingly nauseous, tripped, and promptly collapsed in a flailing, stumbling mess as he came to a rolling ass-over-teakettle stop in front of the cabinet. He was wheezing like he still had asthma, having been suddenly and inexpicably introduced to a whole new world of pain.

 _\--Galaxy. **Galaxy** of pain,_ Lex gasped as he amended the thought a subjective century later when he finally finished belly-crawling in pure agony over to a metal cabinet and behind it. He collapsed in just as pure a relief for awhile, panting, and thank god no-one else had been in the room for that.

And all Lex could think for a minute or two was _I never knew, I never knew_ and suddenly all those clumsy fights with meteor freaks back in Smallville made so much more sense and, god, Level 3 hanging above the abyss -- how the _hell_ had Clark managed to pull him up while under the influence of _that?_ Dear god...

Lex groaned and let his head fall back with a solid reverberating _wham_ against the metal cabinetry at his back as he realized that he was still going to need to get at those shards somehow. So how the hell was he going to manage it?

...Well, it _was_ Metropolis General. They were well-equipped.

Lex was grumbling to himself as he sped out of the hospital a few minutes later, the shards wrapped up in an overshirt stolen from one of the radiation suits from the hazardous-materials ambulance unit. He'd made sure to leave the locker he'd taken it from wide-open and looking obviously rummaged-through. The last thing anyone needed was to end up in an emergency situation involvin radioactive matter, rushing to suit up for a quick run, and finding that a crucial part of their gear had been somewhat... misplaced.

He was back in his LexCorp office and shaking with reaction as he collapsed on the couch before he realized that running-about-before-one-looked must be one of Clark's "powers", as he _knew_ full-well that he was surely smarter than to approach green meteor rock when sporting Clark's Kryptonian powers, as that had been the entire reason why he'd all but fled Oliver's presence in the hospital room not... dear lord, thirty minutes ago? Had it been that short a time? And he'd spent most of that had been spent on the roof, waiting for the two of them to leave...

Lex tried to relax back into the couch, but his mind felt like it was on a tilt-a-whirl. Had he really covered everything up? Were there cameras anywhere? Should he worry about erasing any hospital security footage?

How long had it actually taken him to get to the hospital in the first place?

...Oh, hell. He'd been performing superpowered miracles, popping up in front of people unannounced from halfway across town. How in the hell was he going to explain _that?_

Oh, forget the public for a moment, he had bigger worries: the League. There was no way that they didn't know what had gone down -- at least, not the broad strokes. They wouldn't care whether Lex had intended to take Clark's powers, only that he had them now.

And that he also had his memories back. Oh, all their secrets and lies exposed.

He was dead. He was a dead man walking.

He looked down at his hands, because, yes, he was _literally_ a dead man walking.

He was even holding his own death in his hands.

Lex looked down at the bunched-up radiation-shielded cloth hiding its contents and giggled a little hysterically.

~*~*~*~*~*~

He dispatched of the shards easily enough -- he just called Otis upstairs and demanded he bring a lockable lead-lined box with him.

He was breathing easier after that, once the box was safely sitting unobtrusively high on a shelf, out of the way.

...At least, he was until he began to question why the _hell_ he had ever trusted Otis as much as he had in the first place. That was just pure, suicidal idiocy. Missing memories aside, he _knew_ better than to--

Oh. Right.

...Ugh. This was beginning to give him a headache. Trying to reconcile the last eight months of memoriless decision-making and thought processes with his older, wiser, jaded, anything-but-naive self was... well, a tad difficult, to say the least.

He eyed Otis.

"Sir? Are you all right?" Otis simpered-- _asked_ , he asked Lex -- why had he thought-- what was wrong with--? "Is it Tess again?"

"No, of course not," Lex said as he paced, waving Otis away, then blinking and coming to a stop.

"...Where is Tess?" Lex asked, his eyes slowly sliding back to Otis.

"Mr. Luthor?"

" _Where_ is Tess Mercer's _body?!_ " Lex said with a quiet, intense and deadly anger, advancing on his aide, if he really _was_ **his** aide--

Otis blinked up at him stupidl-- _nonplussed_ , and said, "I don't k--"

Lex backed him up against the wall and snatched the tablet computer out of the man's hands.

"Let me make something perfectly clear," he snipped out at the man, and then he held the tablet between three fingers in front of him and snapped it in half with no real strain.

Otis blinked at him, then down at the tablet, then up at him again. "...Sir?"

"You've read the files on meteor freaks, yes?" Lex told him, reorienting the halves, and then snapping the tablet into quarters. "Assume I'm one of the nastier, more powerful ones that you don't want to piss off." He snapped the tablet into eighths. "And act accordingly." Then he deliberately turned his hand palm-downwards and released his hold on the pieces of the thoroughly-destroyed tablet, letting them fall to the floor, not once taking his eyes away from Otis'.

Otis watched this display, looking slightly off-put.

"Um," Otis said. He looked down at his broken tablet, then back up to Lex. "So... you want me to call security on my cellphone and ask for a Level 12 containment team?" he asked hopefully, as if this were some kind of pop quiz.

Lex stared at him for a moment.

Otis looked at him expectantly.

Lex pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Just... find out where security took her body after they found us in here the day of the Contact event," Lex said, turning away to pace some more.

"Um..."

Lex unclenched his jaw with some effort, then stopped and turned back to Otis.

"Can I use your computer?"

"Why?" Lex drawled out.

"Well, you broke my tablet. I can't use that." Otis said, glancing down again at the sparking remains now littering the floor.

...

Lex waved him over to the computer at his desk and went to lie down on the couch.

~*~*~*~*~*~

By the time Otis reported that he'd found out where Tess' body had ended up, Lex was in an irritable mood, mostly because his headache hadn't improved in the slightest.

He followed Otis into the elevator and leaned back against the mirrored sides, closing his eyes.

...Then he remembered that he had no real reason to trust the man and slitted his eyes back open, watching him.

Was it possible that the man was working for Tess, or perhaps one of his competitors? Otis had been there almost from the beginning, and had been at his side throughout most of the entire re-education process that Lex had subjected himself to, in getting back up to speed with what he hadn't known-- remembered at the time.

Was it possible that he was working with the League? Was he a threat?

The elevator doors opened.

Otis walked out. Lex steeled himself and imperiously followed.

He gritted his teeth as he walked down the corridors. This was one of the experimentation sublevels. The labs down here were usually very liberally stocked with Kryptonite-derived materials for testing purposes... if he could trust his files. He was beginning to realize that he'd put a great deal of trust in his department heads and their subordinates. He hadn't actually conducted a physical tour -- surprise or otherwise -- of the vast majority of his labs in months.

He didn't want to think how often Tess may or may not have checked up on things during her reign as CEO.

They could have been doing literally _anything_ with the funds he'd supplied, and doctoring the reports.

Hell, he could be walking into a trap right now and--

Otis used his badge on the door -- dear god, had he _really_ given his aide such high-level access? what had he been thinking?!? -- and they walked into...

Into...

Oh.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex took a careful step inside, and shut the door behind them.

He swallowed. Hard.

"What project is this?" he heard himself cooly ask, as he stared, eyes forward, at his younger half-sister, floating horizontally in a stasis tube not unlike those used in the various Lx cloning projects.

His feeling of dread only grew as he realized that they had co-opted Tess' body for experimentation, because the gut wound had been easily treatable, and not fatal. For a dizzy moment, he coudn't even remember whether he'd actually meant to kill her outright via the stabbing or not.

He walked up to the tube step by step and lightly lay his hand on the plastic shell, and listened with half-an-ear as the lead scientist explained: she was stable but nonresponsive, and what they were giving Tess as a test-treatment for her vegetative state he recognized as having been derived from the work that Lionel's team had done with the late Duncan Allenmeyer.

_Astral projection. Fuck._

He was assured that it was a significantly different chemical compound at a much lower dosage, too low to allow her to have any real effect on the physical world even if the projection side-effect had not yet been worked out. Lex merely grimaced and made a motion that they hand over her chart.

...Every single damn time he'd seen her had been a time that they'd given her a new dose.

The day that Tess had slapped him in that bathroom at the hopsital had been the first time they'd upped it.

Goddamnit.

It all hadn't just been some thin mental echo of Tess he'd had imprinted in his head from the combined effects of the Summerholt serum and the psychic shock of her death. Somehow, what had occurred had connected them more deeply, possibly something further akin to the psychic link that had happened between Lana and one Deputy Watts following that gas line and meteor rock explosion, almost a decade ago.

...It was now almost slightly unnerving to him that he could remember events that far back.

It was more unnerving to think that he might need to be strapped down to his bed with _Kryptonite_ restraints from now on, and who the hell could he trust with _that_? Otis, his oh-so-apparently-faithful aide??

Like all the other 'oh-so-faithful' aides that he'd had over the years, up until they turned on him?

Fuck that.

"Take her off the treatments," Lex said, and then nearly did a double-take as he re-read the recent entries in her chart, mind racing. They'd upped her dosage again, twice in the last two hours. They'd done it because her brainwaves had become depressed in the short-term, almost as if suppressed somehow. They'd thought that she might have been becoming resistant to the drug.

But she'd faded out when he'd been at the hospital -- _faded_ out, not just vanished as she always had before, and now it occurred to him exactly how significant that had been -- and now he could remember what he had not before... and he was having headaches.

\--Her brainwaves had leveled out at about the time Lex believed that he'd collapsed in the showers. His headaches had started when they'd started upping her dosage.

...He'd had a sympathetic brainwave response -- his to hers -- whenever he'd seen her. It was fully-documented by several EEG readings in a later series he'd had taken using an unobtrusive wearable sensor -- one that Tess hadn't been aware of at the time, as far as he knew. The readings of his own brainwaves hadn't been as clear or as exact as if he could have had with them taken in a medical setting, but they had been good enough to show that there had been a significant change in the way his brain had reacted during those time periods than outside of them. He didn't need to call up copies of his own files for comparison; at this point he practically had the data memorized. --All of his times matched hers, at the slightest delay. _All_ of them.

"Take her off the treatments, and flush the drugs out of her system," Lex ordered through clenched teeth, trying to control the tremors that were starting to shudder their way through his whole body. "Do it _now_."

He turned and stalked off to a corner of the room, shaking. He motioned Otis over, and watched the medical techs like a hawk as he gave Otis orders to shoo the project personnel out of the room once they were done, to dump every last bag of the experimental 'medicine' down the drain, and then put the room on lockdown, remove everyone else's access, and reassign the project personnel.

He didn't want to think about whether or not Tess could see him -- see _this_ \-- right now.

How much did she know?

~*~*~*~*~*~

Lex took the elevator to the roof and gasped a sigh of relief as the doors opened and the cool nighttime air washed over him.

He wondered if this was, perhaps, related to Clark's powerset as well -- a love or longing, a need for open spaces.

Lex had been too paranoid to just leave the lab and assume that his employees would follow his given orders. He'd watched from his corner as everything unfolded as he'd ordered. He'd even made sure that Otis had left for the night once the rest of it was done; he'd seen him off out the front doors personally.

He still didn't know if he'd done the smart thing in leaving Tess alive for now. He could have killed her. It would have been easy. All he would have had to do was shut off the oxygen supply to her breather mask.

It wasn't like she would have felt anything. She'd been brain-dead again at the time, and whatever had come to Lex with Clark's minimilist powerset had clearly included some sort of healing that had severed -- or healed away -- her mental connection to him at the same time that it had reversed the effects of the neuro-toxic Summerholt serum. He would have felt nothing, as well.

The pounding headache he'd had -- apt, as he could all but visualize Tess banging at the walls of his mind, trying to force him to let her in... or out... -- had nearly dissipated now. He was finally, truly free of her presence, in all the ways that counted, that had hounded him every waking moment for so many months.

Not only that, but now he was a superpowered menace. Ha.

A superpowered menace who, once his immediate busness with Tess had been concluded, had, as his first order of business, taken the private elevator up to the Penthouse suite and showered and changed clothing. How evil of him.

He'd donned the black glove on his right hand out of habit, both surprised and also... not... that the scarred skin had healed. Oddly, he'd felt more surprise that the 'seams' around his arms, legs, torso, and neck had all healed quite cleanly, as if they'd never been there. As if he'd never been a patchwork mess.

His next stop once properly attired in fresh garments had been the elevator yet again, and now he was stepping out onto the roof to survey his new-old domain, the better to contemplate his next steps.

Lex slowly walked to the edge of the roof.

He stared out over the city.

The city didn't stare back.

_...Well, at least I'm not **that** paranoid._

He rested his hands on the top of the retaining wall, and felt... silly. He felt silly. Because what was there to contemplate, staring out over everything that was and wasn't his? What the hell was he going to **do** with his very own superpowers, let alone _Clark's_?

Lex didn't really want for anything, after all. He had money; he had power. Lionel was dead. (Business had been really very quiet comparatively, with Lionel gone and Oliver no real challenge on that front, even with Sullivan on his six. Wayne seemed more interested in live-and-let-live than any real collaboration _or_ competition, as well.) He had Tess out of his head. He knew now that the only real alien menace looming on the horizon was Kal-El, and Clark wasn't exactly in the same league as Zod on that count. ...Far more insidious in his effect, perhaps, but not liable to try and set off a bunch of nuclear weapons or slaughter half Lex's species on a lark, even on a generous dose of red meteor rock. Lex could deal with a long-term, slow-building threat. That was hardly a blip on his radar, compared to everything-- _anything_ else he'd ever had to face.

Lex sighed. No, now was not a time for looking outward. Now was a time for introspection. Assuming he was actually able to hold onto these powers of Clark's, what _did_ he want to do with them? ...Anything?

Lex turned his back on his city and sat down on the wall. He rubbed his forehead and tried to think everything through.

On-and-off, he thought he heard Clark's footsteps; Clark had always had a distinctive walk, or, rather, several distinctive paces. This one was one of the steady, unhurried, non-angry ones, so Lex wasn't worried that he was about to get bust in on like their library confrontations of old anytime soon. No, it wasn't worrying, not at all -- what it _was_ was distracting, and he tried to pay it no mind, just as he similarly shoved the sounds of the city from his conscious hearing and under his notice, every time he heard an odd door slam, or a siren go off, or a scream...

...up until he heard the elevator ping.

_What?_

Lex looked up to see Clark exit the elevator -- _what the hell is he doing here?_ \-- ...and Clark was staring at him for some reason. _Had he not expected me to be up on the roof? Why else would he come up here, then?_

"Uh, hey," Clark said, as the doors closed behind him.

"...You seem to be looking better," Lex said, warily watching him walk over. And he obviously _was_ better, which meant that he'd probably regained at least some of his powers from Eric.

Which also more than likely meant that he was here to 'convince' Lex to give him the rest of his powers back.

"Yeah, well, I got the half of my powers back that Eric had," Clark said. "So my healing's doing wonders for me."

 _Wonderful_ , Lex thought sarcastically. Lex really didn't like even odds with Clark, especially when it cme down to a physical confrontation; Clark had had his powers longer, and presumably knew how to use them to best effect. (After all, 'even odds' were nothing compared to the odds Lex would have in a 'fair fight' with both of them as they were 'normally' matched. He was sure he could wipe the floor with Clark, so long as he had access to the appropriate amount and type of Kryptonite, and time prior in which to plan his assault.)

Clark had also decided to arrive in his Superman uniform, which spoke ill of how this was going to go down, in an 'official League capacity'... though oddly he was missing the belt for some reason.

But as Lex stared at Clark, and Clark continued to _just stand there not doing anything_ , his mind started to gnaw away at the puzzle of Clark's chosen mode and form of entrance -- why the elevator? Why at normal speed?

Why without the rest of the League?

...Really, where were they? _Where is the Kryptonite, the immediate and relentless beat-down? Where are the accusations, the recriminations, the righteous indignation, the anger and arrogant bluster and overwhelming bullying force?_

Clark stared at Lex.

Lex stared back.

Clark broke the silence first.

"Sorry about Oliver," Clark put out there.

"Don't be," Lex told him, feeling more than a little off-balance, because that had left him reeling -- an actual apology from Clark, and for the lapse of good behavior in a 'friend', no less! But he covered his reaction thoroughly and without pause. "If you hadn't been so bad at stopping him, I might not have realized that I had part of your powers for quite some time," he informed Clark casually. Lex, at least, had no need to lie, and no reason not to throw such a blatant blunt display of such right in Clark's face to prove it. "I certainly wouldn't have known that the League had been able to subdue Summers if you hadn't prodded Queen into becoming so flustered by it that he let the information slip, and if I hadn't known that they knew about the Kryptonite, I wouldn't have been wary enough to run before he pulled any out on me."

He was highly aware of the fact that Clark had continued to walk towards him as he had talked. He forced himself to keep his muscles relaxed, to not telegraph his unease and insecurity. He hadn't planned for this, for Clark to come so soon. Surely the League should have been expressing undue caution in approaching him, with Oliver thinking that Lex had planned to take on some of Clark's powerset ...or had the League already created contingencies to deal with such a threat?

Clark came to a halt in front of him, crossed his arms, and... sighed. That was all.

This was... odd. Very odd behavior.

And then, with Clark close enough to visually assess properly, Lex finally noticed the lack of an earpiece. --But that meant Clark didn't have anyone talking in his ear, nor could he easily communicate with the League.

Lex suddenly had a sneaking suspicion about what functionality the 'buckle' on Clark's usual 'Superman' belt-buckle might have beyond closing a loop of material that obviously wasn't needed as part of the bodysuit.

"We can talk freely, if that's what you're worried about," Lex put out there, testing the waters. "I'm not recording, and I've got some privacy shielding up."

Clark's raised his eyebrows in surprise, and Lex added, "No sound can reverberate its way out if spoken below a certain height," -- _somewhat above head height, of course, or it would be useless_ \-- "and the air 'wavers' enough at the edges of the roof that video can't discern lip movements," he stated, not going into a detailed explanation. If the League wanted to develop their own safeguards -- or workarounds -- Lex certainly wasn't going to help them in that regard by offering up information that Clark could easily pass along for their use.

"Guess nothing beats a little 'accidental' heat bleed-off," Clark sighed out as he rubbed his hands across his face, and Lex had the sudden urge to know whether that was something Clark had 'sensed', 'felt', or 'seen'. He quickly stifled it.

There was an awkward pause, and Lex filled it with, "You took the elevator up," because he still felt like he didn't have his bearings in this... whatever-this-was that they seemed to be having. He'd expected a fight, not a... a _conversation_. What in the hell was going on?

"Well, I am still recovering from surgery, technically," Clark informed him, and he damn near did a Clark-Kent foot-shuffle while Lex expertly did not wince at the sight of 'young-Clark' making an appearance.

Damn. This was _not_ what he'd been expecting _at all_.

...Then again, Clark was a consummate liar, if not entirely expert at it, these days. It was obvious he was feeling guilty over something; _what_ exactly that something was, however, was the billion-dollar question.

"So," Clark said, still staring at his feet. "If we're not being listened in on..."

"Yes?" Lex said, letting his hands splay out to either side on top of the wall, and leaning back on them slightly, casually, giving himself a reason for his muscles to appear tensed up, as he readied himself for fight-or-flight, because -- shit -- he'd just made a grievous tactical error, hadn't he?! Had all of this just been some great distraction as the League had moved into position? With Lex having admitted that he would have no clear record of what would happen on this rooftop above the city, was _now_ when Clark and his little friends would strike with impugnity?

"...then now would probably be a great time for you to try and turn me to villainy, or something," Clark said.

Oh.

\--wait, _**WHAT?!?!**_

Lex blinked at him slowly, as his mind rabbited around in circles, because _dear god, dear god, dear god, he hadn't actually meant that, had he?!?!_.

Oh my god.

...Wait-again-a-second-time -- Clark actually thought Lex was a 'villain' _already?_ He hadn't even really _done_ anything yet! Everything even the _least_ bit nefarious that he'd ever done in Smallville had been all about fighting alien menaces and... oh, okay, Lex could sort of see where Clark might be going with that one --but still! That wasn't the same thing as fighting 'Superman', let alone _Clark!_

So all that really just led up into one great, big, and multivarious _What???_ , and Lex knew it bled into both his gaze and his expression.

And then things started to get interesting...

~*~*~*~*~*~

In retrospect, Lex realized that he probably should not be treating Clark's problems like his own. Just as he should not be treating Clark's challenges like his own.

Ah, well. Old habits, and all that.

Besides, with Lionel gone, and Clark rather unwilling to fight him at best, and reluctant to do so at worst -- after all, he could goad 'unwilling' into a different form of 'belligerent' rather easily, but forcing a motivation that wasn't already there was a losing proposition from the start -- Lex needed to take his challenges where he could find them.

Ultimately, Oliver and the rest of the League being pissed off at the end of it all was just going to be icing on the sweet, sweet lunacy-cake that he'd half-baked up with Clark. (...when they finally figured out what the hell had been going on right under their noses, that is, and the longer he kept it up before the League found out, the more pissed-off they were going to be.)

The best part of it was, Lex wouldn't have any ulterior motive! He hadn't meant to have, or ever really planned on having, Clark's powers before; it really was entirely an accident (--Prometheus suit tech meant for Lana to steal, notwithstanding). And, even better, he wouldn't ever have had the genesis for the idea of 'going hero' if the League hadn't practically tossed Clark out on his ass for no good reason -- in essence, by their own actions they had actually prompted Lex's soon-to-be-ill-fated 'anti-heroic turnaround' in the first place. ...Not to mention the media fallout that would occur when the League was caught out attacking and stripping a 'fellow do-gooder' of their superpowers, whenever they determined Lex's identity. Lex was planning on **that** being a _very_ public event.

They were going to be the alpha and the omega of his 'heroic' cycle, and he'd have the best excuse in the world to treat them all as enemies from there on in: _one man, struggling with memory loss and a painful past, gifted with extraordinary powers by accident and deciding to take on the ills of the world, is brutally attacked by his fellow 'peers' for no discernable reason, derided, cast down, and stripped of that which made him able to solve the world's most immediate and ever-present ills._ (...well, street crime, anyway.) _And then..._

 **REVENGE!** On a grand scale! (And they'd all totally deserve it!)

He could hardly contain his excitement at the thought of being damn near _handed_ such an archetypal setup, such a wonderfully delicious 'backstory' for his public image, because the joke was going to be all on them, and Lex was going to have the last laugh. He couldn't lose!

Ha. Ha. Ha.

~*~*~*~*~*~

And then, goddamnit, Clark had to go and screw everything up.

As usual.

...Because, fuck it, he wasn't supposed to _enjoy_ it so much!

~*~*~*~*~*~


End file.
